Zimbabwe ignores order to release seized activists to hospital

The Zimbabwean authorities have ignored a high court order to release a leading human rights activist and several opposition members to hospital, their lawyer says.

"The long and short of it is that the police haven't complied with the high court order," lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa said.

"I doubt if they will comply."

Jestina Mukoko, director of Zimbabwe Peace Project - a rights group which has been compiling cases of election violence - was seized from her home on December 3 by armed men who identified themselves as police.

Two members of her staff were taken away from their office days later. They are being accused together with several oppostion members of recruiting anti-government plotters.

Judge Yunus Omarjee late Wednesday night ordered that Mukoko and eight other activists be transferred to a Harare hospital until their next court date on December 29.

The judge offered no explanation but one of their lawyers said they may have been tortured.

Specific charges against Mukoko and the others were not listed in the magistrate's court, but prosecutor Florence Ziyambi spoke of the alleged anti-government plot.

"Sometime in October the government of Zimbabwe launched complaints that Botswana was training insurgents...for the purpose of removing the present government. That's when security people picked up the accused persons."

"Charges relate to recruiting for banditry," Mr Ziyambi said.

A defence lawyer also said that the group who appeared earlier Wednesday had been accused of recruiting or goading people to undergo military training in Botswana to topple President Robert Mugabe's government.

It's a fundamental human yearning to be a part of something bigger than one's self, and maybe that's what drove my mate Ash to die, far from home, in a bloody foreign war against Islamic State, writes C August Elliott.